An architect and an artist

An exhibition by Richard England, with the theme The Architect As Artist, kicks off at the Manoel Theatre Courtyard, in Valletta on Thursday night.

Prof. England needs no introduction either in Malta or in the international architecture scene but in Malta his works or drawings have often raised controversies and while some like his style some just love to hate it.

For Prof. England, it is very important for architects to draw, draw and draw and his philosophy is very clear: "To draw is to analyse, to synthesise. Drawing depends primarily on one's seeing skills and the capability of analysing the essentiality of what one sees. One absorbs the whole but documents the essence. What you draw remains with you. You take it in, you understand it and then document the fundamentals. What is on paper, in the drawn image, is the core and soul of what has been registered in the mind's eye. Yet, what you draw is not only what you see for above all one draws also what one knows".

He says that in the drawings that will be exhibited, he attempted to draw not as an architect but in the freer mode of an artist.

"One's basic training will always remain an integral part of oneself and therefore the drawings intrinsically provide data about what I consider, as an architect, to be essential information about any documented built-form. But the drawing is ultimately a process of continuous flow and feedback between eye, brain and hand," he said.

The exhibition features drawings of "places loved and visited, focusing on my greatest personal love, the natural and built form of my island home. It is these native sun-washed stones which continue to inspire me to make manifest their visual dream imagery in ocular, tactile and emotional graphic form," Prof. England said.